The MVP Machine: How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players

pitches.’”

SAVIORMETRICS

To quickly develop his slider, he needed “more feedback in the loop,” he says, a more efficient way to acquire the kind of subconscious mastery and command (more myelin) over a pitch that is required to succeed on the mound.

The combination of “the intellectual component of critical thinking and problem solving, alongside the physical preparation and the competition, is one of those things that’s really unique to sports,” he says.

THE CONDUIT

I’ll never forget that. It proved to me and made me see how important player development was, how important repetition was, how important individual instruction was.”

ASTRONAUTS

The new kind of coach, Mejdal says, would be, “more technologically [and] quantitatively savvy than a conventional coach… someone who can throw [batting practice] and also write a SQL query.”

These rare birds of baseball, fluent in front office and dipped in dugout wisdom, are “perfect conduits to get a message from high theoretical guys down to guys who are just used to grinding it out on the baseball field,” San Diego Padres manager Andy Green said in 2017. “Unless that message gets translated where a guy speaks both languages, it usu